Best Beaches for Landscape Photography: Eleuthera, Bahamas

The best location I've found to date for beach landscape photography is....hands down......Eleuthera, Bahamas. A close second goes to Kauai, which has some outstanding beaches. I think Eleuthera beats Kauai in two main areas:

I say this not as a beach connoisseur, as Kathy's and my beach experiences have pretty much been limited to New Zealand (4 trips), Hawaii (about 20 trips), Florida, St. John (Virgin Islands), and Great Exuma and Eleuthera in the Bahamas. I say this by simply looking at the body of really good beach photography work I've been able to generate in each locale, divided by the time spent there. Eleuthera wins that contest hands down.

Eleuthera has challenges. First and foremost are rental cars. Figuratively and literally, they stink (well, they stunk when we went). There were no chain car rental agencies on Eleuthera. Cars were rented through family-run operations; most cars are at least 10 years old, and the ones that were offered to us were just plain horrid: filthy, bald tires, and faulty exhaust that required the windows to be rolled down at all times. There were not alternatives. Know what you are getting into. Other challenges are getting good food (typically, expensive) and service (typically, pretty poor). The Cove Restaurant was consistently good. And, the beaches often had a lot of garbage that would wash up from the ocean. That's not specific to Eleuthera. The world's oceans are badly polluted now, and it's getting worse fast.

But I digress....all of that was offset by the beaches and the water color. The beaches were mostly empty, the sand came in about 100 different shades. The water color was amazing: deep, deep turquoises, aquamarines, and blues. At times, I shot just the water and the sky. It was that spectacular.